ColossiansOne

body · 2 claims

Head Pain

The first affliction in the Testament's list of thirty-six, and the one that shows the whole system in miniature: a named spirit, a named ailment, a named counter.

HeadacheMigraineHemicrania

Chapter 18 of the Testament of Solomon is the closest thing antiquity produced to a systematic table of this kind. Thirty-six decans — the spirits of the ten-degree divisions of the zodiac — are brought before Solomon, and each states its name, the harm it does, and the name that thwarts it. Head pain is first.

The four openers are the striking part, because their counters are the four archangels: head pain is thwarted by Michael, migraine by Gabriel, damage to the eyes by Uriel, and throat complaints by Raphael. After those four the counter-names stop being archangels and become voces magicae — Marmaraoth, Iaoth, Adonael — names with no independent existence outside lists like this one.

Oldest first

Who was blamed, and by which text?

Each card is one text making one attribution, in its own framing. Reading down the column is a transmission history rather than a set of independent witnesses — and where a claim carries a grading, that grading is about how well it is grounded in the passage it cites, nothing more.

Ruax

The Testament of Solomon · c. 100–400 CE

The first decan. Says he causes the heads of men to be idle and their temples to throb.

What stops it
The name of the archangel Michael, spoken against him.

Testament of Solomon 18

Barsafael

The Testament of Solomon · c. 100–400 CE

The second decan, who causes those he is set against to suffer pain in one side of the head.

What stops it
The name of the archangel Gabriel.

Testament of Solomon 18

Countermeasures

What the texts say stops it

c. 100–400 CE

The name of the archangel Michael, spoken against him.

c. 100–400 CE

The name of the archangel Gabriel.

Which texts make these claims?

Oldest first. The distance between the earliest and the latest is the thing worth looking at: a claim made in an incantation four thousand years ago and one made in a paperback in 1973 are different kinds of evidence about the same symptom.

All afflictions